Sorting stamps for Habitat is Emma Zaiac's 'full-time, overtime' job

LEESBURG — Sorting stamps to raise money for Habitat of Humanity of Lake-Sumter is an around-the-clock hobby for Emma Zaiac.

Once the 90-year-old's volunteers separate stamps from envelopes, she sorts them by stock number according to her "collecting bible," a 2011 edition of "The Postal Service Guide to U.S. Stamps."

Stacks of thumb-sized ink portraits of Mother Theresa, Ronald Reagan and countless other icons neatly cover a desk in her house's spare bedroom. On the opposite side of the room are more than a dozen cardboard trays, lined with hundreds of miniature glassine envelopes that stamps are placed in.

Zaiac catalogs her collection during the day, sorts through new stamps while watching TV at night and works through weekends.

"It's my full-time, overtime job," she said.

Her hobby is built on micro-transactions — even the more valuable commemorative stamps usually only bring in $1 per 100 stamps. Any stamp worth less than 15 cents per 100 gets thrown out because the processing fee outweighs the profit made for the organization that builds homes for low-income people.

"Other than that we're going in the hole," Zaiac said. "If we pay three cents [for the envelope] and then the postage, we're not making anything."

Every two to three months, the 90-year-old fills enough trays to send an order of stamps worth $300 to $500 to the Mystic Stamp Company, a stamp dealer in Camden, N.Y.

Zaiac's service — collecting stamps through donations and then reselling them on behalf of Habitat — is so uncommon that stamp collectors have actually sought her out. A California stamp dealer became interested in buying from Zaiac after reading about the first house sponsored by the stamp program in a Habitat for Humanity newsletter.

She has been filling out special orders of stamps for the man for the last five years.

This month, Zaiac and the stamp program were recognized at a ceremony dedicating the third house she's funded collecting stamps. Pastor Ron Anderson, a volunteer who collects stamps for the project, presented the house key.

It will be the last time the two attend a dedication ceremony together. Zaiac said she plans to retire from the position in June and return to her hometown of Pittsburgh to live with her daughter.

"It's wonderful to say we've paid for three houses with stamps," Zaiac said. "But it's time to go home for this runaway child."